Calvino welcome the reader to his new novel (addressing him in the second person). The first chapter begins.
A secret agent tells the story (in the first person) of how he was supposed to
meet a spy in a station, one night in winter. Instead, someone warns him that
the other man has been murdered and he could be next. He takes shelter in
the shop of a divorced woman, whose jealous husband might kill any suspected
lovers of her.
The first chapter ends. The second chapter informs the reader that he is
reading a defective copy of the novel. The reader thus walks to the bookshop
where he purchased the copy and meets a woman who is also trying to return
the defective book. This "is" the new chapter of the novel, and it is a
completely different story.
The two readers are given two copies of a book that bears the cover of Calvino's
novel but contains a novel by a Bazakbal. This novel tells the story of
a Polish boy and his father through the eyes of the boy. But this story too
is interrupted because the rest of the Bazakbal novel is blank pages.
The male reader calls the female reader, Ludmilla, and learns that she
has the same
incomplete novel. They visit the university where the complete text is kept,
but the text is in the dead Cimmerian language. A professor translates it
for them, and it turns out to be yet another story: a man becomes an accessory
to the escape of a convict. This is clearly the wrong story. But the reader
tracks down another professor who is giving a lecture on thatA novel: this is
yet another story (three young people in a besieged city).
Next, the reader inquires directly at the publisher's offices, and there he
learns that the faulty books are due to the legendary con artist Ermes Marana.
The publisher gives the reader a new book, which, again, tells a new
(detective) story. Determined to find his novel, the reader studies the
correspondence between the publisher and the forger, that involves a
best-selling author, Flannery. The reader travels to Flannery's country and
residence and learns that Flannery has been robbed by Hermes of the first
chapter of his new book. Flannery, however, was merely copying a novel
written by another novelist. The reader starts reading this novel, and, of
course, it tells another story, of an innocent dragged into a case of
kidnapping. (All of the stories feel like mini-Hitchcock movies)
Ludmilla calls him. The reader does not find her, but, instead, in her house
he finds a library of novels, mostly by Flannery, all of which seem to have
been stolen or forged by Hermes. Despite the fact that Ludmilla appears to
be involved in Hermes' criminal actions, the reader makes love to her.
He thinks he has found the novel he was looking for, but it turns out to be
yet another story. He then reads Flannery's diary, that explains how he
found inspiration for his new book. Flannery finally gives the reader the
novel that he was looking for, written by a Japanese novelist. It turns
out that Flannery has decided to write exactly the novel we have read so
far: a novel made of only beginnings of novels.
The Japanese novel is a comic story about a boy who wants to make love to a
girl (the daughter of his professor) but ends up making love to her mother.
Informed that Hermes is in South America, the reader flies to South America.
There he meets Ludmilla's sister Lotaria, who gets him in trouble.
In prison, he reads yet another novel, in which a man, looking for his mother,
finds two girls, each of them gorgeous and each of them potentially his sister,
Lotaria turns out to be a secret agent who works for two secret services
and has multiple names (and even rapes him in jail).
Released from jail, the reader is sent to a country where Hermes has been
recently jailed. There he finds another novel, but has time to read only
the first chapter before the police closes in on him.
The reader ends up in a library where several readers are discussing the titles
of the novels he has read so far: all the titles read one after the other make
up a lengthy title in the ancient fashion.
The reader marries Ludmilla and, in bed, is about to finish reading
Calvino's novel. The reader has reemerged from the several nested narrative
levels and is again where the first chapter started. Except that he has
read all the chapters that tell the story of him trying (and failing)
to read the novel. The novel ends.

If English is your first language and you could translate this text, please contact me.